Venus in transit

Earthlings will witness a special kind of eclipse, the transit of venus across sun on 8th June 2004.  The second transit will be on 6th June 2012


Photograph of the Transit of Venus on 1882 Dec 06.

Planetary transits are far more rare than eclipses of the Sun by the Moon. On the average, there are 13 transits of Mercury each century. In comparison, transits of Venus usually occur in pairs with eight years separating the two events. However, more than a century elapses between each transit pair.
The first transit ever observed was of the planet Mercury in 1631 by the French astronomer Gassendi. A transit of Venus occurred just one month later but Gassendi’s attempt to observe it failed because the transit was not visible from Europe. In 1639, Jerimiah Horrocks and William Crabtree became the first to witness a transit of Venus.

Aasim is very excited about it and so am I More information

Click here for World Visibility of Venus transit

She a window flower and he a winter breeze… …

She was a charming girl, always smiling, always had something nice to say, she was my best friend.

I love him dad, he has asked me to marry… …. On her brief visit home she spoke to her father about the boy who she was friends with in the town she studied. She was inclined towards the proposal, the boy had always made her feel special, he made her feel like a woman he deeply cared for her . Her father was not sure of her choice, the boy belonged to a different community, different religion, a background totally different from theirs. Somewhere in her heart she too had the same fears but the fears were far less and took a back seat in comparison to the happiness she was seeing ahead.

Her dad finally agreed to meet the boy and told the boy very confidently, I know my daughter. He said to the daughter , its your decision, its your life you have to take the step forward if you want to marry him and bear all responsibilities of the action.

It was a good meeting, the boy was happy, the girl went back to her hometown back promising to return in a month.

Weeks passed, I saw him every day, we would sit and talk for hours about life about her about the lives they will live, it wasn’t easy for him to talk to his own dad about the marriage, but he had done that, he was ecstatic.

The month passed away, she did not come, her letters came periodically but they were non committal she was now between yes and no.

31st December 1990 was the cut off date if she did not come by then or at least give a firm commitment, he had said he will forget her… the wait was getting to be too much.

She did not come, a letter arrived saying it is best that they do not marry each other she further said that her father stands by his words that she can marry if she wants to, but it is her decision and that she has decided not to get married to him.

He was heartbroken. he woke up sad everyday, mornings are the toughest, he once told me.

Days went by, the boy missed her he felt he did not deserve this. All he had given was love, all his love and all he wanted in return was love, just love. Its so unfair to be left alone like this.

Years passed, she married the boy who was her father’s junior in office.

14 years is a long time I remember it all as if it happened only yesterday.

Most of all I remember the meeting her father had with the boy I was not there but I know what transpired in great details.

Had her father insisted and resisted his daughter marrying the boy, I am sure she would have put up a fight did everything she could to marry him. They would have been together if there was an opposition from her family.

Things changed when she was allowed to take her own decision and bear the consequences.

What happened to him after she left him is another story.

Aasim’s poem on planets

Aasim’s Summer Holidays started from yesterday and as expected, the first day of staying home he got throughly bored -here’s a creative result of his boredom- he told me to write down (as he can’t write himself) a poem he made on planets

Mercury is the hottest planet
Venus is molten and very hot too
Earth is the third and we just live there
Mars has storms and no body can live there
Jupiter is medium temperature
Saturn is very little far from the sun
Uranus is cold planet and so is Neptune
Pluto is coldest planet and nobody can live there because they will freeze
Sedna is a very small planet
and Quaoar is a planetoid

P.S Aasim is 6.5 yrs old .